For what it's worth.....



Orange Co. Order Book 1, 1734-1739, p. 403

October 26, 1738.  Robert Green Gent produced a Certificate by him granted 
to John Ashley dated the ninth day of May 1733 for taking up two runaway 
Negroes the one named James belonging to John Diggs owner of part of a 
Copperwork in Prince William County the other named Harry belonging to 
Stephen Lewis of the adsd County of Prince William above

ten miles from their sd Masters Houses. ...



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lyle E. Browning" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Frontier folk and granting time


> On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:49 AM, Sunshine49 wrote:
>
>> I never realized there was copper in VA. in any great quantity.
> That was the biggest part of the problem. There wasn't a great  quantity, 
> at least not enough to be particularly economically viable.
>
>> I thought it was all traded down from the Great Lakes area. I know  it 
>> was highly prized by the natives. It would be interesting to  speculate 
>> why they traded it away in Va, and didn't keep the bulk  of it.
> The Virgilina District copper has scant mention of copper nodules.  Raw 
> pure copper was what the NA's worked with, as they did not smelt  the 
> ores. It may be that the scant surface amounts had already been  picked 
> clean prior to European involvement. Then European settlers  with mineral 
> experience saw the ores and went after them.
>
>> Did they carry it away and hide it elsewhere for safekeeping from  the 
>> whites?
> By Indian traders I meant colonists who traded with Indians. The  nearest 
> and biggest trading center was at Occanneechee where the  great trades 
> routes converged. Byrd sent pack trains with 80 animals  down there at the 
> height of it. He got furs and skins back.
>
>> Did they have to trade it to other tribes for items they were short  of, 
>> once the English interrupted their old ways and patterns?
> That's a slight misapplication of intent. NA trade was astounding in  its 
> reach. A paper presented at a recent conference showed 4000BC  trade in 
> obsidian between PA, NY and another eastern state where the  nearest 
> obsidian source was Wyoming. That opened a few eyes. The  English didn't 
> disrupt old ways and patterns in the frontier as much  as they used and 
> augmented them for their own enrichment. Byrd made  his fortune in the 
> Indian trade. Granted, it declined over time due  to European encroachment 
> on NA territories but west of the Fall Line  was still largely frontier 
> for a good deal of the 18th century.
>
>> So much we don't know about native cultures! Well, maybe there's  still 
>> hope of finding an old copper mine, last year they did find  that old 
>> mine in Stafford County that the natives had worked and  that they think 
>> John Smith visited. Just a few steps ahead of the  developers...
> Whoa now, take that with a grain of salt. You have a hole in the  ground 
> that may have been a mine, but what came out of it is not  definitely NA, 
> and conjoining that with a site that Smith may have  visited is pure 
> speculation. The number of people running around  looking at mineral veins 
> in the 19th century in VA was astounding.  You'd have to look at the 
> geology, where it was in relation to the  mine and see if NA's used any of 
> the minerals in the mine, look at  the toolmarks (there are no known NA 
> mines as they simply did not dig  tunnels; although they did exploit 
> gravel deposits that outcropped on  the surface for several feet back into 
> the slopes so whatever was in  Stafford was not a NA mine).
>
> Lyle Browning, RPA
>>
>> Nancy
>>
>> -------
>> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>>
>> --Daniel Boone
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:27 AM, Lyle E. Browning wrote:
>>
>>> The Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin has excellent info on the 
>>> copper deposits. The general area is known and in one of the  accounts 
>>> there was a story of a set of miners in the 1880's  breaking into an 
>>> "old works" with antique tools. That must have  been one contemporaneous 
>>> with Byrd as it had passed out of living  memory. That is the only one 
>>> that is locatable. Some of the others  are in the empoundments of the 
>>> Roanoke River.
>>>
>>> The folks doing the mining were all big-time Indian traders.  Getting 
>>> smelted copper to a port for shipment (the preferred  alternative for 
>>> the Crown) was 80 miles to Petersburg by pack  mule. There are no 
>>> records of exports that I've found yet. So,  given that they were Indian 
>>> traders, and that copper was a prized  commodity, it might be we're 
>>> looking in the wrong places. We  should be looking in NC, TN, and 
>>> Alabama for VA copper objects  traded down the pipeline. Copper in the 
>>> Dept. of Historic  Resources collection from Late Woodland villages has 
>>> been tested  and has been found to be Native Copper from Minnesota or 
>>> European  in origin. None from VA was identified. So, no exports, no VA 
>>> copper in VA, and everyone Mine Mad according to Byrd. Vast effort  to 
>>> chase ore veins suggests an economically viable enterprise of  some 
>>> antiquity. My conclusion would be that they were either  unproductive or 
>>> else it was traded. Now all we need is one smelter  site to test, and to 
>>> talk with the SHPO offices in the southern  states to see what they 
>>> have.
>>>
>>> Lyle Browning, RPA
>>>
>>>
>>
>> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the 
>> instructions
>> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.8/714 - Release Date: 3/8/2007 
> 10:58 AM
>
> 

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html